Bush message read by Iraqi PM?
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005Iraq’s new prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, gave a speech Monday Juan Cole says caused a “major stir”
Cole says the speech “seemed to back off the policy of debaathification or the exclusion from high office of former Baath civilian and military officials,” and that, “Some Shiite parlimantarians were furious.”
Cole describes the “pressure” Jaafari has been under, “to find ways of bringing the Sunni Arabs into the government.”
Here is where I would like to see Juan Cole dig a little deeper. He repeats the conventional wisdom that, “Most seasoned and capable Sunni Arab leaders, whether civilian or military, had been Baath Party members or had some close connection to the party.” A question for which I would like an answer, though, is how are these “seasoned and capable” ex-Baathists being used by the Americans in their chain of command? Please see this Deep Blade post, US-sponsored militias and death squads in Iraq, for a discussion of what seems to be happening and a link to an important article on the subject by A.K. Gupta.
Another important question is, did Rumsfeld’s and Bush’s orders to “not politicize your military” from last month get through to Jaafari? Is that why Jaafari caused this “major stir”??